Summer has arrived early in Oregon; it’s been the driest year so far ever recoded, and now its warm too. So thoughts of hitting the road naturally come to mind, especially upon seen this fine little motor home. Flat-Black 66 shot it in Texas, and it’s obviously the marriage of a Kenworth conventional and an Avion trailer. Now that’s traveling in style. Might be a little big for those little dirt National Forest Roads I like to take. But no worries about running out of fuel; or maybe those extra tanks have been re-purposed for water and sewage.
Like nothing I’ve seen before. I’m no heavy-truck wonk, but the wheelbase looks too long for anything a tractor of that type might normally carry. In other words, could it be a special-order or splice? The latter might work for something relatively light like a trailer.
Wheelbase is about right for a truck that works in the oil and gas fields.
Its also possible the frame was stretched, its not that big of a modification to add frame length and a longer drive line. Some of the O/O like to go for the low rider look with their conventional tractors will stretch their equipment out to 25ft+.
It looks like this thing has ~400gal of fuel tanks just on the drivers side. I like range as much as the next guy but 3000mi between fill ups is a bit much.
My bet is that they are not all fuel tanks, like Paul mentioned.
For the camper who must have (and take along) absolutely everything, what would the next step be. A house-moving truck, towing a house?
That guy must have been reading my mind!
I wouldn’t have gone with such a big base rig – what I envisioned was a medium, perhaps with all-wheel drive…and, for quiet operation, Super Singles on the rear. Mount up a luxo-trailer like this one; and you’ve got a solidly-constructed motorhome!
I’m still looking at converting a DIVCO milk truck into a camper. This is a little much for me.
I think it’s damn near perfect, better find a camp ground with “pull through” spaces though. 😛 Wonder how many forward gears that sucker has and what is under the hood?
Almost certainly a Fuller-Eaton 9 or 10-speed.
Eight speed setups weren’t that common in that truck’s era (circa 1978) and 13-speeds were reserved for dump setups.
Probably a Cat six in there…could be a Cummins; but I’d never seen a Detroit Diesel in a KW.
I took my CDL test on a tractor like that…right down to the paint job. Although it didn’t have quite so much fuel on hand…
Well I’ve learned to drive stick now I just need to learn double clutch and rev match.
Forget double-clutching. You need to learn how to float gears.
Use the clutch to start and stop ONLY. When you get ready to come out of your startup gear, lighten up on the oil-pedal…the lever will slide out. Off the hammer, let the revs drop 500, and drop it in the next one. Should go in with a nice, neat snick!
When you get to the highest gear in the lower range, just remember to IMMEDIATELY click over the range selector, as soon as you get the gear engaged. Then, when you float it out, the range-shift happens as the load’s off the transmission…you just row through the gears again.
It’s a hell of a lot easier than double-pumping that bear-trap-spring clutch.
I should add this caveat: Do NOT try this on your car; and ESPECIALLY not on a car belonging to your wife, mother, friend, significant other. Not unless you want to FUBAR the whole gearbox.
An automobile manual-shift gearbox has synchronizers. A Fuller 10-speed does NOT…it’s what used to be called a crash box. If you try floating gears on a synchro five-speed, you’ll burn up the synchronizer bands.
I used to (occasionally) float shift my 5 speed Focus, and previous manual transmission cars, because I could. I won’t do that anymore. After 12 years, it can be hard sometimes to get the Focus into first at a stop. Maybe I screwed up the syncro. Oops.
When I took this shot I was fascinated by this camper. It was so professionally done. I googled it and found nothing but if you google Kenworth camper there are a few others like this out there.
Depending on the perspective and foreshortening due to lens focal length, the wheelbase doesn’t seem unreasonable for a TRUCK (not TRACTOR) but the fuel capacity looks bigger than anything I’ve seen on a commercial truck! Or maybe one of them is a sewage holding tank …
I knew a guy who once had a truck that could do 2000 miles between fills, I think it was 450 gallons (Imperial) or over 500 US gall.
Cairns _ Sydney 1600 litres 1 fill.
There are a few log haulers with a long wheelbase bed, but those are for 16′ logs with a trailer for more 16 footers. This guy looks like he could haul a 32′ log or two, but I’d hate to see how it did on the logging roads.
FWIW, I screwed up my foot one day and drove my Beetle home via float shifting. Fortunately, most of the 140 mile trip was on the interstate. Interesting, and not much fun.
I’m also sure that this was originally a straight truck set up to tow a full trailer behind it. Such rigs have always been relatively rare but never non-existent.
Over long wheel base for our roads but a nice rig all the same, reading the shifting comments above is the reason shifting instructions are posted inside truck cabs to prevent the kind of tranmission damage caused by that method of shifting as R/R box. The floating gear method and no clutch belongs to a Spicer Transmission certainly not the shift method Eaton Fuller recommend.
Add a bull bar, a .50 cal, and grates over the windows, and voila: your zombie apocalypse RV.
I’m guessing 325 inches on the WB. Aint nothing! Most independent O/O stretch them at least 300″ so at this length it’s still pretty manueverable as it is. Nobody specs out a straight truck like this with a 9 speed. I’m guessing Ultra-Shift. Now if it was spec’d out by a die hard O/O I’d be guessing 18 forward speeds. My guess for engine would be Cummins ISX.
It aint floating gears if your using a four wheeler with a synchro’d tranny! Anybody can and probably has done that. That’s why it’s called floating! No synchros so you have to sneak it in. Double points if you can do it with out grinding them. Triple-qaudruple points if you can do it on a down shift going down a 6% grade.
Did I mention that I hold a Class A CDL
“Triple-qaudruple points if you can do it on a down shift going down a 6% grade.”
Actually…that would qualify for a Darwin Award.
And I’ve had a Class 1 CDL…since CDLs were CDLs. Before that, a Texas Commercial.
I’ve made my stints in the driver’s chair short ones…but they keep on coming up.
That is a true Road Warrior. win!
6% grade thats not even steep and driving a crash box clutchless is simple though not recommended for the novice and certainly not recommended by Eaton Fuller but cluthless shifting with no noise is childs play try driving clutchless over our hwy 5 with 1in8 grades I can but thats what I do for a crust.
You should see the trailer!!!